


frost aground (homesickness)

by Xenon912



Series: Hollow Castles [3]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Ancestral Veneration, Anxiety, Autistic Ursa Wren, Child Marriage, Children of the Watch (Star Wars), Confucian Elements, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Mandalorian Politics (Star Wars), Mother-Daughter Relationship, Mother-Son Relationship, Multi, Polyamory, Sabine Wren Has PTSD, Tristan Wren Has PTSD, Ursa Wren Has PTSD, internalized ableism, technically? i mean. the medieval au version of that, this one is also sad sorry y'all
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-14 15:22:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29669295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xenon912/pseuds/Xenon912
Summary: Before the well, the moonlight so bright,Be it frost aground?  I suppose it might.I raise my eyes towards the silvery moon, thenLower them, brooding; I'm homesick tonight.夜思 Night Thoughts by Li BaiWinter descends onto Krownest, and Ursa tries to put her children back together.
Relationships: Alrich Wren/Ursa Wren, Bo-Katan Kryze/Alrich Wren/Ursa Wren, Bo-Katan Kryze/Ursa Wren, Fenn Rau & Sabine Wren, Fenn Rau & Tristan Wren, Fenn Rau & Ursa Wren, Sabine Wren & Tristan Wren, Sabine Wren & Ursa Wren, Tristan Wren & Ursa Wren
Series: Hollow Castles [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1953304
Comments: 6
Kudos: 5





	frost aground (homesickness)

**Author's Note:**

> **Trigger Warnings:** Referenced Child Marriage, Referenced Pedophilia, Referenced Sexual Assault, Internalized Ableism, and general self-loathing.

It snows, mercifully, the night _after_ Saxon leaves, or two nights after Tristan is...attacked.

The snowflakes catch the light as they fall past Ursa’s study window. The castle is quiet, muted by the snow outside, but every so often it gives a creaky sigh. The sound of a sleepy castle always calmed her in the past, but now the silence feels suffocating. She forces down the feverish urge to go check on Sabine and Tristan again and glares at the letter she’s reading. The letters swirl around the page unhelpfully, and she screws her eyes shut and gives a heavy sigh. She struggles to fill her lungs around the ice sitting in her chest.

“Ursa,” Alrich says. He has his feet up on the couch, and the click of him flipping through bamboo slips has been her companion for the night. “That’s your seventh sigh in the past ten minutes. I just wanted you to know.”

“Not helpful,” she grumbles in response, rubbing her aching temples. “I—I’m going to check on Sabine.”

“Don’t,” he replies. “You’ll wake her up. You know she’s a light sleeper.”

The retort that Sabine sleeps like a rock dies in her throat. Sabine stirs at the slightest provocation now, and Ursa might be willing to weather her grumpiness were it not for the frightened, hunted look she wakes with, scrabbling nervously at the sheets. She refuses to wonder who made her that way, mostly because she already knows.

“Don’t bother Tristan, either,” Alrich continues, looking up at her. She feels unfairly vulnerable in his gaze. He’s always seen through her armor, but now it feels painful. “Go to bed yourself. They’ll still be here in the morning.” At her reluctant grimace, he adds, “Bo is waiting.”

“The two of you are the most dangerous schemers in my court,” Ursa says crossly.

“Oh, it was no scheme,” Alrich reassures her, refolding the book. “She was so tired she didn’t make it to her quarters. She’s been reorganizing the entire garrison.”

“Why…?”

Alrich stops, looks down at the floor. “I imagine she blames herself,” he says quietly. Ursa tries to breathe again, but it sticks in her throat. She feels like she’s been slowly suffocating since she found her son curled up sobbing on the floor.

Alrich is now standing in front of her, and he places a hand on the back of her head. “You’re tired,” he murmurs, leaving no room for argument.

_How can you expect me to sleep?_ Ursa wonders, but lets him pull her against his chest, and sighs when he digs his fingertips into the base of her neck to undo the knots that have formed there.

“Thank you,” she mumbles into his chest.

“I’m your husband, Ursa,” is his gentle response. “For your information, I’m summoning your healer tomorrow. You’re so tense I don’t know how you can turn your neck.”

“Ruthlessness.”

“Ha ha.”

* * *

Three mornings after the first snow of the year, she meets Bo-Katan in the hall outside Tristan’s quarters. Her warrior is dressed for travel in the finest of Krownest’s furs—Ursa will tolerate no less for her—and has a thick woolen cloak folded under her arm.

“I should be back by the end of next week,” Bo says. “The Tribe has already arrived at their winter campsite, and that’s only two days by sled once you’re through the pass.”

Ursa sighs heavily, tucking a stray lock of red hair behind Bo’s ear. She doesn’t want her to go, and Bo knows this. As always, their duties must come before their feelings, even when those feelings are all-consuming, crippling terror for the other’s safety. 

She leaves her hand against Bo’s cheek, who leans into it. “Do _not_ get frostbite again, _ar’ika.”_

Bo crinkles her nose. “I won’t. That was awful.”

Ursa leans forward and kisses her briefly. “Don’t get stabbed, either.”

“Hey, now,” Bo replies, with half of a smile on her features. “The Children of the Watch may be a bunch of cagey zealots, but they’re not unreasonable. Gods willing this territory dispute is just a misunderstanding.” 

“I don’t know if your gods reach that far north,” Ursa teases lightly. Bo-Katan laughs, which does something to alleviate the pressure building in Ursa’s chest.

“Just...stay safe,” she says, and then adds awkwardly, “Sabine needs you.”

She can tell Bo comes very close to rolling her eyes, which makes her feel distantly like she’s dying. But her wife merely leans forward and presses their foreheads together.

“I’ll be back before you know it,” Bo reassures her. “You and Alrich will hold the fort just fine. Just...talk to her. Both of them. Don’t let them wallow.”

“You know I’m not good with words,” Ursa mumbles lamely. It is suddenly easier to fix her gaze on her boots than to absorb Bo’s verdant gaze.

“They don’t need a playwright, my love. They just need their mother. Okay?” Bo tilts her head up with a hand under the chin.

Feeling rather like a child, she answers. “Okay. But come back quickly anyway.”

It’s Bo who initiates their kiss this time, chuckling fondly, and when she pulls away Ursa takes her first full breath in over a week.

* * *

It’s far too cold in the garden, but that is where she finds Sabine.

Her eldest—once her heir, now a queen upon a throne Ursa fought for long ago—sits perfectly still on a bench, wrapped in a heavy but insufficient cloak.

“Sabine,” she says, hovering by the door. “Come here. It’s too cold for you to be outside.”

Sabine does not respond. Ursa’s heart skips a frightened beat. “Sabine,” she repeats, then, _“_ _ad’ika._ Did you not hear me?”

Her daughter finally raises her head. Her golden eyes gaze out from the shadows of her hood, but even from here she can see her cheeks have gone bright, painful red. Feeling like her limbs are burning, Ursa quickly crosses the path to her. She almost grabs Sabine, picks her up and carries her back inside like she used to do when Sabine was a baby and wanted to stay outside to play in the snow, but she stops herself. Instead she rests an awkward hand on Sabine’s shoulder.

_“Ad’ika_ _,”_ she says. “Come inside. I’ll make you tea.”

Sabine’s voice is quiet, mechanical. “Don’t you have things to do?”

She has a million things to do. “You’re more important.” They stare at each other a second longer, and she adds, “please, Sabine. You’re getting burned. Can’t you feel it?”

A heavy beat. “No,” Sabine admits. “I can’t...I’m sorry.” She stands, stiffly, and Ursa pulls her own cloak off, hunching her shoulders against the gnawing cold, and wraps it around her daughter. It’s too big for Sabine and it makes her look excruciatingly young. Ursa wraps her up tightly and bundles her inside, back up the stairs to their sitting room, and sits her down on the sofa closest to the fireplace. She wills the flames higher to warm her little one up, and Sabine gives a quiet sigh as she slumps against the cushions.

“Rau,” she says, and her guard straightens. “Tell a servant to bring a blanket.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” He slips out the door, and Ursa finally pushes Sabine’s hood back. She’s tied her hair in a braid that looks to be a Kalevalan design—she has a distant memory of a vivid red braid, of Bo-Katan grumbling _these take so long to take out_ _—_ and Ursa’s stricken by how long it is, until she remembers that Sabine has been fifteen for four months now, which means it’s been at least a year and a half since she last cut her hair.

Sabine’s cheeks are starting to crack, and Ursa grimaces at how painful they look. She kneels in front of Sabine. She’s terrible with healing—fire magic is not exactly conducive to it—but this is a spell she’s been doing since she was twelve years old.

“This is going to sting,” she warns. Sabine silently nods her ascent, and Ursa places her fingers over the cold, red splotches and channels a stream of magic out through her fingers. Sabine gives the tiniest whimper, and she absently murmurs, “it’s alright, little one. Just a few more seconds.”

She stays there until the red fades completely, and swipes over her daughter’s cheeks with her thumbs. The color is starting to return to the rest of Sabine’s face, but it somehow makes her look more exhausted than ever. Ursa forces the ache in her chest away.

“Let me check your hands,” she orders, and Sabine dutifully places her gloved hands in Ursa’s own. Her gloves are fine, black Kalevalan leather, not unlike the ones Bo-Katan gave Ursa for her 20th birthday, save for the stamped letters at the cuff: _TS._

_That depraved bastard._ Ursa pulls them off and stuffs them in her pocket, turning Sabine’s hands over for signs of frostbite and pushing down the mix of revulsion and anger and dizzying fear those initials summoned in her.

“Your hands are fine,” Ursa says. “That’s good. Why were you out there, anyway?”

Sabine tries to pull her hands away, and Ursa tightens her grip instinctively, which rips a frightened gasp from her daughter. Cursing herself internally, Ursa pulls away.

“Sorry,” she says. “I didn’t—I didn’t mean to scare you.” 

She goes to stand, because she’s kriffed things up enough, but Sabine says, “wait,” and she pauses, unsure.

“You…” Sabine stops, then starts again. “When we were little, if we got wind burn, you would always…” She trails off and ducks her head.

Ursa thinks, remembers, and leans forward, taking Sabine’s face in her hands. She presses a soft kiss to each of Sabine’s cheeks, breathing her in—she still smells like the toddler who would curl up to sleep on her chest so long ago—and pulls away.

“Better?”

Sabine nods. “Y-yeah,” she says, sounding choked up. Ursa doesn’t know what to say, so she just chews the inside of her cheek and thanks the ancestors when Fenn Rau and a servant reenter at that moment.

Fenn wordlessly hands over the blankets in his arms and lets Ursa replace them with her and Sabine’s now water-logged cloaks. He has accepted being her part-time valet with a silent grace that she has come to expect of him, which does not stop her from feeling slightly bad when she makes him carry her cloak, fetch her tea, or do any of the other menial tasks she’s too paranoid to let anyone else do. (It's not entirely paranoia; she's had her tea poisoned enough times to kill a lesser being, and the one time she actually drank it she spent three weeks bedridden and the court convinced themselves she was dead, which was nightmarish.) She also knows he is loath to leave her alone, even in the (relative) safety of the keep, and, unlike Maul and the Saxons, she derives no pleasure from mistreating her servants.

The other servant sets a tray with a teapot and cups onto the table and backs away, slipping back into the hall as Fenn hangs up the cloaks to dry and returns to his spot by the door.

“Do you still want tea?” she asks Sabine, wrapping the thick blanket around her shoulders. Sabine nods, so Ursa picks up the teapot and steps closer to the fire, willing the flames down so the water will boil correctly.

“Who taught you to make tea?” Sabine asks softly behind her. It’s an unexpected question, but...anything to keep her from sliding back into that dark chasm Ursa can’t seem to pull her out of.

“My father,” she responds. “He always said that a noble who could not make their own tea was little more than a rich, lazy bum.”

“That sounds like something he would say,” Sabine says with something that might approximate a laugh. She’ll take what she can get. They stay in a familiar silence while Ursa hangs the teapot on its hook and goes to sit next to Sabine, far enough that they aren’t touching, but close enough that—if she wants—Sabine can lean against her. Sabine immediately wriggles against her side, mumbling some typical excuse about just being cold. It’s a glimpse, a glimmer of the _young_ , brilliant girl that left for Kalevala nine months ago, and Ursa’s heart beats so fast she feels vaguely nauseous.

Once Sabine is comfortable, her knees pressed into Ursa’s thigh, she speaks again. 

“What...what would he think of me?” she asks, her voice wavering again, and Ursa’s heart starts sinking, until Sabine continues with, “I mean, I know what he would have thought of _Tiber…”_

“Your grandfather called Gar Saxon a wet mole rat with albinism to his face,” Ursa recounts, and Sabine snorts. “I think...I think he _is_ proud of you, little one. He celebrates your bravery. Your survival.” She wraps her arms around her daughter and buries her nose in her hair for a moment. “You know our ancestors watch over us, Sabine, no matter where we are. Your _ba’buir_ is still here, and he’ll protect you.”

“He did a bit of a bum job of it when I was down south,” Sabine says, and Ursa feels a panicked chain of _sorry I’m sorry I’m so sorry_ rising in her throat when she realizes. Sabine is joking. 

“That was a joke,” Sabine adds lamely, just as the thought hits her. “Sorry. Not funny.”

“I...it’s alright. I’m not good with jokes is all,” Ursa says, stupidly, because they’re the words of someone who is utterly stupid.

“It’s okay,” Sabine tells her, and then repeats it. “It’s okay. It’s not your fault.”

She is no longer talking about Ursa’s obliviousness. She can at least tell _that._

“I should’ve tried harder,” Ursa says, and she hates how ragged her voice sounds. Sabine immediately opens her mouth to retort, but Ursa cuts her off. “Don’t— _don’t_ , Sabine. You are my _daughter._ You were _my_ responsibility, your safety was in _my_ hands, and I—” She closes her eyes tightly, tries to force away the repulsive image of Tiber with his hands on her little girl, and fails, miserably. “I failed you. _I failed you.”_

Because she should have killed him the first time he set foot in her home, the first time she saw the way his eyes followed the curve of Sabine’s spine. She should have killed him long before she had to watch him wrap a noose of ribbons around Sabine’s throat.

Sabine sighs softly. “There was nothing you could have done,” she says. “He had the Emperor’s backing. He would’ve marched an army here and killed us all.”

“...Yes.” Despite herself, her pride twinges at the admission. “But—”

“Stop.” Sabine rests her head on Ursa’s chest. She speaks with her eyes closed. “What’s done is done. Please stop blaming yourself.”

Part of her whispers that is impossible, that the burden of her guilt is one she deserves; but the rest of her realizes, terribly, that Sabine will not move forward unless she does so too. So she presses a kiss to the top of Sabine’s head and whispers, “okay.”

The kettle screeches. “Put two sugar cubes in mine,” Sabine requests.

Ursa can’t help but laugh. For once, there isn’t a weight on her chest to crush it. “You are too much like your father.”

**Author's Note:**

> there isn't a therapist in any universe qualified to deal with all this tbh


End file.
